


Find Me Way Out There

by Louis_the_Snake



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Robin: Son of Batman (Comics), Super Sons (Comics), Teen Titans (Comics)
Genre: Don't Examine This Too Closely, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:16:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25776508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Louis_the_Snake/pseuds/Louis_the_Snake
Summary: Songfic to get out feelings about Damian's past and future. Worst case scenario, kind of. Damian returns 'home' to challenge Grandpa. Short and dramatic.
Relationships: Minor Jon/Dami if you squint
Comments: 1
Kudos: 21





	Find Me Way Out There

I'm a long way from the land that I left

Damian laid on a bed of sorts, with a small roll pillow under his neck. He knew his location, not by coordinate, but by name. Not that he wanted to remember it. He sometimes thought of it more favorably as the Villa of Challenges. He hadn’t told anyone he was leaving Gotham in the night. Thalia had taught him good ways of evading the Bat, despite his tight hold on the city. 

I've been running through life and cruising toward death

Growing up an assassin gave one a stomach for pain. Pulling out the subdermal gps unit had barely registered after years with the League and now a few with the Batman. Dick had protected him more than any of his mentors previous, including Father. How fast does one have to grow up to kill a man at the age of four? Had Damian ever really understood mortality?

If you think that I'm scared you've got me wrong

Nothing had ever scared Damian. Surprised, sure. Caught him off-guard, once, of course. Nothing brought the terror Scarecrow once used to control Father. There was barely anything that made him nervous. His wariness had been mistaken for fear, but that was useful to get the observer to underestimate him. 

If you don't know my name, you'll know it now

Robin. The boy-hero Gotham loved and cared for, more than the Bat, more than anything. Robin was the child of the entire city. No one, the world over, had not heard of him by this name. It was a worthy title to inherit from the older students of Bat. It suited Damian just fine.

I belong bodily to the earth

More than most. Humans were all air and water and bonfire, but Damian, well. Damian was engineered in a tube. All of the elements used to build him were perfectly pure and pulled from nature or made in a lab. This body of his was property of Ra’s Al Ghul. 

I'm just wearing old bones from those that came first

Father, Mother, Brothers. Alfred, Dick, Jason, Tim, Duke, Stephanie, Cass, Barbara, the Superman, Wonder Woman, Ra’s. An island full of his brothers showed him that he was just a monster like them, a construct trained in arts older than most languages. He stood on the shoulders of giants, with nothing all his own. Damian raised to his feet. The sun would rise soon.

There are many more flames when mine is gone

Heroes come from nothing. From the street kid with a tire-iron, from a kansas farm. From circus and criminal empires and Cop’s Kids and fanboys and nobodies. Heroes carried the torch of justice itself. Damian knew that once he snuffed out, there would be no shortage of others to take his place. 

They will build me no shrines and sing me no songs

When Jason died, he got a hologram in the cave. When Dick grew up and out of his suit, it was hung up on display. Batman kept trinkets of everyone he met. Damian wouldn’t get one. Of this, he was certain. No one would mourn him. He was the child of a foe no one wanted to face. 

I'm a long way from the one that I loved

Damian missed having Jon at his side. He missed having Dick there to guide him, or Father to analyze. Here he was alone. He wrapped his fists, he laced his boots. Distance wasn’t a problem for Damian, though, because he could hear them in his head. What they knew, how they’d feel about the situation, what he would lie or reveal to them. 

I've been tending old flames, lamenting what was

Once, Heroes were novel. They saved the world that needed it, from threats the world couldn’t handle. Now, the threats were all Hero-sized. The world needed heroes, and heroes became commonplace. 

Drifting in a land time forgot

Traveling from ancient temple to Gotham to pits of hell to space, and ageless worlds in other dimensions, Damian no longer belonged to the time the world was in. He belonged to the mission. The idea that he could bring justice, or even knew what that meant. 

If you think that I've changed, you know me not

That was the worst part. Damian had set out to learn justice and morality and love and light and to understand Batman’s philosophy, so he could know the strength Batman possessed. He didn’t find it. The closest he could think of was Jon and Dick and their genuine desire to help everyone, but that was not something he could do. Damian knew hard decisions and permanent solutions. 

I belong bodily to the earth

More than Dick, more than Jon. Acrobats and flight-capable aliens aside, Damian belonged to the ground like a snake to the grass. He fell fast and hard and he moved low and hidden. Even Tim outclassed him in the ease of the false flight they’d found. Damian was an assassin first, and a Robin second, down to the way he moved.

I'm just wearing old bones from those that came first

The clothes he wore now looked nothing like his costume. Plain black, with a high collar and loose pants. Soft-soled shoes instead of boots. Maskless. But even dressed as he was, he was wearing the face of a Robin. It was in his posture now, the way he instinctively reached for his belt rather than the dagger on his side. His eyes showed a little spark inside. Something he thought he lacked the ability to kindle. He despised that he held hope.

I been unraveling since my birth

Damian counted his birth at as many points in his life as he could. He took his first breath in the arms of The Demon’s Daughter. He knew death when he killed his first person. The first time he exited the Lazarus pit, he knew life again. When he crawled free of the caves, Goliath cradled in his arms, he gained his right to his life. His first night as Robin. He didn’t gain anything that night, not really, but he did gain everything he truly cared for. 

Gonna wander out there and see what I'm worth

Damian stepped into the silence of the stone courtyard. The shadows’ trainees hid in every place to observe him. With measured paces, measured breaths, he took his place at the line in the tiles. The mosaic of the floor were a clear sparring ring, big enough for whole rows of drills, but empty now save himself and his opponent. 

Find me way out there

The gilded robes were blinding in the first light of dawn. Green and gold and jewels crusted the dried husk of a man the League called teacher. 

There's no road that will lead us back

As grandfather shrugged and was relieved of the excess weight by four attendants, Damian said nothing. He did not bow. He did not acknowledge the look Ra’s gave him. Ra’s knew that was more disrespect from the disgusting monster his daughter had taken to calling son.

When you follow the strange trails

Damian knew he would have no way to leave this fight. He knew no one would help him. He knew he was, infact, completely outclassed. He also knew that if he did not do this, and if he did not win, the Demon himself would destroy everyone he had ever thought to ally with. Batman, Jon, Dick, the Titans, the League would destroy everyone who had known Damian, either as Robin or as himself, which meant his teachers, his classmates, hundreds of innocents gone before Ra’s was done reshaping the world. Not that they would have been spared without knowledge of him, but with it Ra’s had an excuse to torture them. 

They will take you who knows where

Being Robin had led him from his mother’s shadow to past his father’s reach. They’d taken him from knowing killing was just to wishing he had never thought that. They’d taken him from a nearly mute over coddled brat to a vocal and even snarky trickster, a willing team mate and had humbled him to what he hoped was reality.

If I found a way to stay with you tonight

The moment before he opened his eyes to fight, he had an eternity to reflect. Under the calm, under the adrenaline, under the roar of thoughts predicting moves and analyzing posture and equipment, there was a simple yearning. Damian wanted to be in Jon’s room, sleeping on the floor in a shirt too big for him, with the smell of fresh Kansas air and eggs cooking downstairs. He wanted the arms around him that he’d complained about again and again. Dick’s, Jon’s, Bruce’s, anyone who had been brave or foolish enough to embrace him sincerely, Damian wanted to be home to them, completely supported and almost whole. 

It would only make me late, for a date I can't escape

He brought himself back to the practiced calm at the front of his mind. He could yearn, he could ache, but no matter how he felt here he would die or he would succeed his grandfather. Either way, he would never be back in those arms again.

Find me way out there

He opened his eyes. Ra’s was already striking his leg. 

There's no road that will lead us back

Sliding out of stance, Damian moved and parried the blow. 

When you follow the strange trails

Damian had to take his dagger out sooner than he had hoped. It would have been embarrassing to pull a blade this early in a fight had he been fighting anyone but Ra’s, but as it was, it was impressively late for someone his age. 

They will take you who knows where

The ground embraced Damian when he fell. 

If I found a way to stay with you tonight

A memory- or maybe a dream- of smiling friends, gentle laughter, Alfred’s cooking, embraced him even more easily and readily. 

It would only make me late, for a date I can't escape

Damian had died before. This time he knew he wasn’t coming back.


End file.
